other things, a commercial operation, it was entirely natural for the travelers to dicker with the mystics, trading olives and oranges for sacks of salt which could be sold elsewhere for enormous profit. Thus a dozen days passed in preparations and barter. But at last trade was finished and the expedition was ready to set forth.
This business of trade was entirely logical, moral and unobjectionable, yet it infuriated Guest Gulkan beyond measure. He believed (this was the rationalization by which he sustained his own ego against the buffeting of misfortune) that his life was heading toward some culminating crisis; and he took it as a personal affront to find the wizards so casual as to postpone this crisis by a whole twelve days of mercantile dickering.
At last, leaving behind a strong contingent to guard their ship, the wizards went inland on foot, bearing great stocks of food, water and firewood in the yellow bottle in which both Shabble and Sken-Pitilkin were still held as prisoners. Thayer Levant chose to keep Shabble and Sken-Pitilkin company, for the knifeman had absolutely no interest in tramping at great length through the mountains. But, compelled by pride, and by a rational soldierly interest in maintaining his own fitness, Guest Gulkan chose to march the long leagues rather than ride them out in the bottle.
The wizards marched to the north-west corner of the Breach, where the blue and yellow billows of the Shores of Glass gave way to honest rock. From there, they followed a steep and ancient train marked with cairns and with ancient gray-white banners mounted on bamboo poles.
The trail climbed precipitous slopes by means of stairways a league or more in height. They crossed engulfing gorges by ancient bridges. In places, Eljuk had to be blindfolded and led with a piece of rope, for he was too terror-stricken to proceed with his eyes open. Some of the paths, after all, consisted of nothing up flags of rock inserted into man-made slots in a sheer cliff face.
Eljuk's brother Guest was more disturbed by the long tunnels which pierced entire mountains, and which were a necessary and unavoidable part of the route. In those sometimes-humming sometimes-hot wormways through the living rock, Guest experienced grim intimations of doom, particularly when passing certain great iron doors which were sealed against intrusion.
The more lengthy and many-branched tunnels reminded Guest of the mazeways Downstairs, the labyrinth beneath the city of Injiltaprajura on the far-distant island of Untunchilamon. At times – when black grass was growing underfoot and cold green lights were burning overhead – the resemblance was so close that he more than half-expected to encounter a dorgi or a therapist.
But every venture through the long succession of such complexes delivered them again to the sky, and each time the sky was higher, and colder, and more beset by wind.
In the dry and wind-ravaged heights of the Shackle Mountains, environmental stress – the height, the dryness, the grinding wind, the poor food and the labor of travel – began to take their toll on Eljuk Zala. Under the influence of that stress, cold sores broke out, and their crusted presence added a further disfigurement to the purple birthstains which marred his lips.
Spreading beyond those lips, the sores took hold on his cheeks.
Eljuk had to be reminded not to touch those sores, with Sken-Pitilkin doing the reminding repeatedly when Eljuk entered the yellow bottle in the evenings to study irregular verbs and origami. If the hands wander from lips to eyes, then the disease can endanger the sight, as Sken-Pitilkin had learnt during those years of his youth in which he had practiced as a pox doctor.
'He saved our brother Morsh,' said Guest Gulkan, reminding Eljuk of the manner in which Sken-Pitilkin had secured a cure for Morsh Bataar when that young man's leg had been grievously broken,
'so you should trust to his counsel.' Guest was solicitous of Eljuk's health, and tried to convince him that he should travel inside the yellow bottle. But Eljuk would not. Since his brother Guest chose to march the mountains,
Eljuk was determined to do likewise. Besides, the bottle was claustrophobic, and from previous confinement Eljuk had grown to hate the thing.
Once, when Shabble was busy chasing shadows in the depths of the yellow bottle, and when Eljuk had fallen asleep in the middle of construing a particularly irregular verb – the verb trizon, which varies according to astrological influences – Guest ventured to share with Sken-Pitilkin his concerns for Eljuk's safety.
'He's – he's got these Trials to face, hasn't he?' said Guest. 'He has to go into this, this Warp thing. Maybe he'll die.'
'Maybe he will,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Well,' said Guest, 'isn't there any way I can help him?
Maybe I could persuade him to rest, you know, to gather his strength.'
'I didn't know you to be so tender of your brother,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Why,' said Guest in surprise, 'but I saved him from drowning at the risk of my own life.'
'Eljuk?' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'You remember!' said Guest. 'The battle, you know, down by the Yolantarath. Oh, but you weren't there. It was Zozimus, that's right, he was all dressed up in his armor, he had a falcon, you were back in Gendormargensis. Anyway. Eljuk was in the water, he was crying out for help, so I raced down to the river, I jumped in and pulled him out.'Guest was emphatic in his account. Clearly the Weaponmaster believed himself to be telling the truth. But Sken-Pitilkin, even though he had not been there on the day, knew otherwise. For Guest had confessed the full story in drunken reminiscence with the
Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite and the dwarf Glambrax, and Sken-Pitilkin had overheard some of those drunken confessions.
True, Guest had jumped into the Yolantarath River to save a man. But – Eljuk? Sken-Pitilkin had a very distinct memory of Guest saying:
'Eljuk! I'd not so much as sponge my face for Eljuk!'
Furthermore, though Guest plainly retained no memory of the occasion, the Weaponmaster had once made a sober confession to Sken-Pitilkin, admitting to a precognitive vision in which he had seen his father drown in the Yolantarath. In consequence of that vision, when Guest had seen someone floundering in the river he had naturally thought it to be his father – and, identifying the man thus on the strength of his vision, had risked his life to save the poor fellow who was in difficulties, only to find to his disgust that it was actually Eljuk. Guest Gulkan had confessed the whole truth of the matter to Sken-Pitilkin on an evening when he had sat at the confluence of the Pig and the Yolantarath, waxing sentimental about the fate of some men he had hung some days earlier. Sken-Pitilkin was interested to observe how systematically Guest misremembered his own past – not wilfully, but entirely unconsciously. We are often the least reliable witnesses to our own lives, for so much in memory later changes as we reconfigure ourselves in the light of future experience.
'You saved your brother once,' said Sken-Pitilkin, who saw no point in challenging Guest's misremembering of the past, 'but now he must save himself. There is nothing you can do to help your brother face his Trials. The Trials are as much a test of will as anything. Your brotherly solicitude can scarcely help strengthen his will.'
'I'm afraid he's going to die,' said Guest.
'I know for a fact that I am most definitely going to die,' said Sken-Pitilkin pointedly.
This forced Guest to face up to a fact which he was most reluctant to acknowledge: the fact that he was in the presence of one who had been sentenced to death.
'Couldn't you escape?' said Guest. 'I mean, they've got to let you out of this bottle when we get to this Warp. You can't take the bottle into the Warp if you're still inside it.'
'Some of these wizards are wizards of Arl,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'When I'm let out of this bottle, they'll be watching me. One false move, and I'll be crisped to a cinder.'Guest Gulkan accepted this.
In the arrogance of his early youth, the Weaponmaster would never have accepted such a gloomy prognosis. For, in his extreme youth, the Weaponmaster had thought himself equal of anything the world could bring about him. But, ever since being mauled by the Great Mink, Guest had been unable to muster up the same invincible confidence.
So the trek continued, with each day taking Guest Gulkan and his traveling companions higher and higher into the Shackle Mountains. The heights were cold, and silent. The lichen of long centuries grew on cairns where dirt- gray banners hung from gray bamboo. The path crossed slopes where rock had once run liquid.
Eljuk began to turn inward, no longer responding to his brother. In the face of his silence, Guest sought advice from Ontario Nol.
'Is he sick?' said Guest Gulkan.
